Supporting New Graduates: Sustaining and Troubling Intergenerational Ties

Abstract

Emily has lived in Millthorne all her life and her family are local to the area. When we met in 2006 she was living at home with her parents and older sister in a semi-detached house on a new-build estate about two miles from Millthorne centre. Though living at home, Emily’s older sister was then in her final year of an undergraduate degree at a local university. She had a life in Millthorne that included a long-term partner and a part-time job and, thus, she wanted to stay close. Emily did not attempt to hide her feelings, confusion mainly, though perhaps also derision, towards young people like her sister who made choices about HE that enabled them to stay close to home. She explained that studying locally and remaining at home in Millthorne was a fairly traditional pattern and one which, to her at least, reeked of missed opportunities and of being ‘stuck in a crap town’ (Interview 1). Emily was desperate to escape Millthorne and begin a new life away from home. Her journey would begin with a move to the South East of England where she studied a degree in Music and Management at a post-1992 institution.